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(Reuters) - Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is running for a second term in a May 25 election. Polls show he could lose to right-wing candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga in a June run-off. The main campaign issue has been peace talks with Marxist guerrillas that Santos launched in 2012 in hopes of ending a 50-year war. Critics say he may be offering the rebels too much but Santos says a peace deal is vital to Colombia's future. JUAN MANUEL SANTOS As defense minister for former President Alvaro Uribe, Santos led a successful campaign against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Economists raised their forecasts for U.S. economic growth in the second quarter and through the balance of 2014, with a generally brighter outlook for both job growth and lower unemployment. Analysts see the economy growing at an annual rate of 3.3 percent in the current quarter, up from a previous estimate of 3.0 percent, according to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve's quarterly survey of 42 forecasters, released on Friday. Third-quarter growth was forecast to accelerate to 2.9 percent, up from a prior forecast of 2.8 percent, and fourth-quarter growth estimates have been raised to 3.2 percent from 2.7 percent.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley economist Gray Newman, one of the longest tenured and most respected followers of Latin America on Wall Street, is retiring, he said in a note to clients on Friday. Newman, 55, covered Latin America for two decades, first from Mexico City and then from New York. As Morgan Stanley's chief economist for the region since 2000, he was a well-known figure in central banks and finance ministries and enjoyed unusual access for a foreigner. Luis Arcentales, who has been with Morgan Stanley since 2001, and Arthur Carvalho, who has focused on Brazil with the firm since 2011, will be the company's new "co-heads" of Latin American economics, spokeswoman Lauren Bellmare said via e-mail.

The magic pill that's supposed to put zip in the economy is known as capex - meaning a surge of capital expenditures by businesses on equipment, property and buildings. Economists and stock analysts have been predicting that a flood of such activity this year would finally turn the economy's modest, disappointing recovery into a robust one. But prescribing the cure is easier than getting businesses to take the medicine. Some analysts don't see why capital spending should actually pick up any time soon.

GamerHub.tv CCP Games is changing things up for fans of its massively multiplayer online (MMO) sci-fi game, EVE Online. Beginning with the June 3 summer expansion, Kronos, the game developer, shifts from releasing two expansions per year to around 10 releases annually as CCP aims to deliver more content, more frequently, to its player base. "The new cadence of development will allow us to take on bigger, more ambitious features, deliver content at an increased pace, and give our players even more to look forward to," said Andie Nordgren, Senior Producer for EVE Online.

MANNHEIM, Germany (Reuters) - German analyst and investor sentiment declined for a fifth consecutive month in May to its lowest level in nearly 1-1/2 years as concerns intensified that economic growth in Europe's largest economy would slow in the second quarter. Mannheim-based think tank ZEW's monthly survey of economic sentiment, released on Tuesday, dropped to 33.1 from 43.2 in April, missing the Reuters consensus forecast for a reading of 41.0 and undershooting even the lowest estimate for 37.1.

MANNHEIM, Germany (Reuters) - Analysts expect the euro to devalue and for prices to pick up, alleviating concerns that consumer price inflation has hovered well below the European Central Bank's target, a ZEW economist said on Tuesday. "At least regarding the results of our survey there is no tendency in the direction of deflation," said ZEW economist Michael Schroeder. "The expected devaluation of the euro signals inflation rather than deflation and also possible reactions expected from the European Central Bank have the tendency of a decrease of the interest rate or quantitative easing.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German exports posted their biggest fall in nearly a year in March and imports also dipped as the crisis in Ukraine and a slowdown in China weighed, narrowing the trade surplus and confirming trade was a drag on growth at the start of 2014. Figures from the Federal Statistics Office showed seasonally-adjusted exports slipped 1.8 percent on the month, their second consecutive fall, and imports dipped 0.9 percent, pushing the trade surplus down to 14.8 billion euros.

(Reuters) - The likelihood of a U.S. interest rate rise in the first half of next year appears to be fading, with more than half of U.S. primary dealers saying it will occur after June 2015, including a couple who said it will not occur until 2016, a Reuters poll showed. A wider sample of forecasters from across the United States and Europe, including the dealers, was split down the middle on when rates will rise from their record low of 0-0.25 percent, with 35 saying the first half of 2015 and 34 predicting the latter part of 2015.

Global efforts to thwart the drugs trade have failed and the time has come for a radical rethink, according to a group of Nobel-prize winning economists, a former U.S secretary of state, the deputy prime minister of Britain and others. "It is time to end the 'war on drugs' and massively redirect resources toward effective evidence-based policies underpinned by rigorous economic analysis," the group said in a foreword to a new academic report on global anti-drugs policies. Citing mass drug-related incarceration in the United States, corruption and violence in developing countries and an HIV epidemic in Russia, the group urged the United Nations to drop its "repressive, one-size-fits-all approach" to tackling drugs.